Redistricting sparks big-time feuds

Verbal altercations, charges of backstabbing and plotting with the enemy, finger-pointing: It might sound like a midday soap opera, but it’s not.

The once-in-a-decade redistricting process hasn’t even been completed in most states, but it has already torn through congressional delegations across the country — shredding alliances, dividing parties and fraying nerves.

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The fights are playing out in ways that highlight tensions that are boiling behind the scenes. “F—- you. Thanks for your help,” Missouri Rep. Russ Carnahan reportedly told fellow Democratic Rep. Lacy Clay on the House floor after Clay refused to oppose a GOP-drafted redistricting plan that imperiled Carnahan by squeezing them both into the same district. A few weeks later, Carnahan erupted at Rep. Emanuel Cleaver on the floor, accusing him of lending his support to the plan.

It’s hardly the only feud. In Louisiana, Rep. John Fleming accused fellow GOP Rep. Charles Boustany of working with Democrats in the state Legislature to engineer a map that would solidify his own seat while leaving Fleming vulnerable. “He’s doing things that could get Speaker [John] Boehner fired,” an outraged Fleming said at the time.

“Sometimes it causes real tension. There’s no question about it,” said former New York Rep. Bill Paxon, a former National Republican Congressional Committee chairman who is now one of the party’s top fundraisers. “Redistricting potentially pits brother against brother and sister versus sister. It’s the ultimate political cage match and makes you run against an adversary who you’ve worked with for years. It’s three-dimensional chess.”

The infighting is not unique to the current round of line-drawing. Previous years have been rife with member-on-member conflicts, like the 1992 dust-up between Stephen Solarz and Chuck Schumer in New York or the tense 2002 Democratic primary between John Dingell and Lynn Rivers in Michigan. The friction underscores lawmakers’ insecurities at a time when their political fates are out of their hands.

“There is anxiety just based on the uncertainty and the unknowns,” said former New York Rep. Tom Reynolds, a former NRCC chairman who has long been regarded as one of his party’s top strategists. “It’s one of those times when a member does not control his or her destiny.”

The wrangling presents a challenge for party leaders, who are scrambling to soothe members who feel slighted or threatened. John Hishta, who served as NRCC executive director during the last redistricting, recalled then-President George W. Bush’s political affairs shop — led by Karl Rove — seeking to extinguish some of the conflicts that were raging at the time.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to get delegations to agree to this stuff,” Hishta said. “Self-preservation: It comes back to that.”

This year, independent commissions tasked with redrawing congressional boundaries have compounded the stress for some members. In California, a new bipartisan, citizen-led redistricting panel has put longtime Democratic Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman on a collision course.

The congressmen are at loggerheads over who will lay claim to a San Fernando Valley-area district. Powerful Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, who has endorsed Berman, told POLITICO there is growing anger among Democrats at Sherman for refusing to pitch his tent elsewhere — and warned that it was time for the congressman to begin considering his options.

Former California Rep. Vic Fazio, a onetime Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman, said the commission added another level of uncertainty to redistricting that didn’t exist previously in the state. In years prior, members had free rein to lobby state legislators who were tasked with approving the final map.